InVisage Technologies is announcing a new chip today that enables a new kind of high-quality security camera, better laptop cameras, and Internet of Things applications. It could open up novel applications, such as a drone that can detect its environment and avoid colliding with anything in its way.

The new chip, SparkP2, is a stripped-down version of a more advanced image sensor that InVisage started producing last year. The SparkP2 can capture 2-megapixel images, which by itself isn’t that big a deal. But it can also capture high dynamic range, or imagery with dark and light parts in the same image, and it can do so using just one-twentieth of the power of competing chips, said Remi Lacombe, vice president of sales and marketing at InVisage, in an interview with VentureBeat.